Was Noah's Flood and Ark Textually Possible? Interrupting Refutation of Robert A. Moore to Turn to Damien Mackey

Was Noah's Ark Impossible? Building the Ark · Was Noah's Ark Impossible? Baraminology · Was Noah's Flood and Ark Textually Possible? Interrupting Refutation of Robert A. Moore to Turn to Damien Mackey

Bible may not seem to favour the concept of a global Flood
Damien Mackey, Academia
https://www.academia.edu/122579140/Bible_may_not_seem_to_favour_the_concept_of_a_global_Flood

To get one thing out of the way, it's not "some" Young Earth Creationists who have given up the idea the Flood was the first rainfall, it's basically all who are in organisms like Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, Kolbe Center for Creation Research, Catholic Apologetics International, or my own "quasi-organism" Antimodernism (before my blogs, I owned an MSN-Group of the name, it had 30 members before it ended like the rest of them in February or early March 2009). We believe rain fell and rainbows were visible before God for the future made the rainbow a reminder of His past wrath, and of His promise to not destroy in water again, to that global extent.

First attack:

Because, as I see it, they are reading the Bible in a modern language, say English, with a modern ‘scientific’ - even to a great extent a pseudo-scientific - mentality, instead of in a way that gives due consideration to the meaning of the language used by the ancient (not modern) scribes with those scribes’ intended meanings.

So, Geography is a science, as scientia certa per causis? No, Geography is a species of historia, an empiric research into arbitrary fact in their detailed facthood, much as the other historia which is known as History.

Stating that Genesis is geographically correct in stating the Flood was global is not misattributing to Genesis the genre of modern science, it is correctly attributing to Genesis the genre of historia, mostly History, but this sometimes also involves some Geography.

Damien and presumably Tim Martin (who called Creation Science a right wing modernism, it could be correct in reference to its denying angelic movers* and geocentrism, except** myself, but that's not what he meant) are now going to show that the phrase type used in describing the Flood meant sth different in Matthew 12:42 or Acts 2:5—11.

At least they do so when it suits them, such as in the case of the Flood or Babel.

For they are not consistent.

If they were, would they not have the Queen of the South, who came “from the ends of the earth” (Matthew 12:42), making her way northwards from somewhere in the southern hemisphere?

And how do they account for the fact that, at Pentecost, people “from every nation under heaven” are actually listed as being inhabitants of only a very small part of the global world – basically, Rome, Crete, and Egypt, through Syria and Turkey, to Mesopotamia? (Acts 2:5-11)

The guy just upbraided YEC for not knowing how to read ancient authors (which argues unfamiliarity with the scope of specialities they have at academia, with, or in my case without degree). He is here asking us to treat the Bible as a whole as if it held complete terminological, and actually even metaterminological consistency.

"Episcopé" is a term. It meant sth slightly different to the LXX translator of some OT prophecy, than to St. Luke applying it to one of the first twelve bishops and his dignity conferred upon someone else, namely St. Matthias. But "every" is not a term, it's a metaterm. In "every high mountain under heaven" we have the term "high mountain under heaven" and the metaterm "every" ... and metaterms are in daily use. And daily use usually precludes complete terminological consistency. I'm reminded of the heretic Zwingli requiring exegetes to use "is/are" with metaterm complete consistency between Genesis 41:26 and Matthew 26:26.

So, "every nation under heaven" could refer to a saying, and "every high mountain under heaven" could refer to literally every high (as pre-Flood mountains went) mountain under heaven.

The example of the Queen of Sheba is literal, she literally came from land's end*** and in that case specifically the South Coast of the Arabian Peninsula (that she also held rule over Abyssinia, like her son, doesn't prove she travelled West of the Red Sea: she might have found Peninsular Arabia safer to travel through than Egypt and also wanted to get in touch with caravans to buy gifts from).

To return to Acts and Genesis, both involve "every" but what about "pulled" ... if I read "I sensed he was pulling my leg" I think it would normally refer to a saying, does that mean "I felt he was pulling my arm" can't be a lady literally complaining about literal sexual harrassment? No. This argument is so silly, it's precisely as silly as a policeman concluding the lady was speaking in metaphors and should have no complained, because she has on some other occasion used the expression "pull my leg" ...

Second attack:

The verse that eliminates a global flood follows: "You set a boundary they [the waters] cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth." (Psalm 104:9)…. Obviously, if the waters never again covered the earth, then the flood must have been local.

Is the cited author using King James? My English Bible is Douay Rheims? This reminds me that much of today's "Catholic" polemics against YEC was in use among Liberal and Semi-Conservative Lutherans and Anglicans, when I was young. It was not prevalent in the Diocese of Stockholm when I converted in 1988. It was not being promoted. It was not being foisted onto a Convert. And given I was a YEC and had come into conflict with co-parishioners and especially co-youthgroupers of KU (now SKU), I am so aware of this. I remember one of them asking me if my Creationist position was not a bit too much like the Catholic position on Matthew 26:26. That obviously helped me to convert. In the 90's, I was mostly among Trads, and that mostly at a geographical distance, so, if this was getting pushed in Sweden already in the 90's, I missed it. It only came to my notice in 2000 or 2001, in a fairly conservative Novus Ordo parish, where they had a copy of CCC and obviously §283 (which was written and promulgated by what I take to be an antipope after I converted).

Now, Psalm 103:9 is not very different in Douay Rheims:

Thou hast set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth.

I absolutely do not get why not returning to cover the earth would imply locality. The interpreter might of course argue there are some localities where the earth never was covered again, others where it was. I would answer the entire earth is one where it wasn't. Besides, when King David wrote 103, not just the Flood, but also the Ice Age variations in sea level were over. So, localities of earth (except very small ones, coastal lines or small islands) which were not covered in King David's time by the sea have not been covered since then either.

Rich Deem happens to be a Protestant scholar, more precisely Church of God. That's obviously why he enumerated the Psalms in Masoretic numbering, not in LXX numbering.

Third attack:

Genesis 2 proves the limitation of the world Moses' audience was aware of, so Genesis 6 through 9 cannot have been more global than that.

My answer is double. But first, this is also a meme this Catholic took over from the kind of Protestantism I came to know in the Swedish Church.

1) The river names in Genesis 2 may have had similar directions from the centre, but a very much larger scope. Imagine for instance Frat starting in the Jordan valley, going up through most of today's Euphrates, but NW instead of SE, over the area which in post-Flood times became Zagros Mountains, over the area which became Black Sea, over most of today's Danube, but NW instead of SE, over the area of post-Flood Alps, over the post-Flood Atlantic, or as wide as the gap was just after the Flood and up through New Foundland and Alaska, like a St. Lawrence river, but NW instead of SE. Similar for Hiddekel starting from Jordan through reverse Tigris and reaching the Pacific somewhere like The Yellow River Basin. And Blue and White Niles continuing to Mekong and to Congo and Amazonas. In that case, the Genesis 2 account of the four rivers certainly includes the area shown on Damien's map, which is why Cush is mentioned, but it is not limited to it.

2) Suppose it were textually possible for the world covered by the Flood to cover the map shown by Damien (Ancient Near East), it is not physically possible. On a second map, he shows a small continent surrounded by the Thetys Sea, but if that one were covered, how could the water stay high above that one while not drowning the areas outside the Thetys Sea?

Fourth attack:

Common sense, I think, would tell us that (as according to the Catholic mystic, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich) there must have been significantly more than just eight people aboard the Ark, and that the eight were the progenitors from whom every person on earth - including those others in the Ark - are descended.

I think I have more confidence in Valtorta than in Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerick.° Her views on the pre-Babel language as "not Hebrew" might reflect some slight tinge of Antisemitism in her priest and even more her views of it as "similar to Sanskrit" would reflect his interests in very early stages of Indo-European studies.

The idea that for instance the Genesis 10 list of people or all except Nimrod were on the Ark, if this is what Damien refers to is not beyond the capacity of the Ark, but would seem to contradict Genesis 11:10. As far as I have heard, it is the common opinion that 8 people entered and possibly nine or ten people went out of the Ark.°°

1) Some have considered Cham and his wife engendered Kush before the Flood was over and some have considered this was punished by making him black or swarty. But he may still have been born after the Flood.
2) Some have considered Noah and his wife engendered a fourth son, who after the Flood became a magician.°°

But it seems that Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerick did think otherwise:

Noah and the Flood according to the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich
Posted on 27 February 2014 by Ron Conte
https://ronconte.com/2014/02/27/noah-and-the-flood-according-to-the-visions-of-blessed-anne-catherine-emmerich/

While the theologian Ron Conte is perfectly orthodox on contraception (yes, it is immoral in itself, not just against marriage, the married couple that commits it is both abusing the marriage and engaging in an act immoral in itself), he's less reliable on the universality of the Flood.

It seems that the passage on the grandchildren of Noah on the Ark reveals that the Blessed was probably partly doing her exegesis in visions:

There were over one hundred people in the ark, and they were necessary to give daily food to the animals and to clean after them. I must say, for I always see it so, that Shem’s, Ham’s and Japheth’s children all went into the ark. There were many little boys and girls in it, in fact all of Noah’s family that were good. Holy Scripture mentions only three of Adam’s children, Cain, Abel, and Seth; and yet I see many others among them, and I always see them in pairs, boys and girls.

Well, the thing is, the explicit mentions of Cain, Abel and Seth are never given in a setting concludable as exhaustive enumeration. She may have shied back from contemplating the fact that even this one includes at least two daughters of Adam, namely the wives of Cain and Seth. She probably missed Genesis 5:4b

and he begot sons and daughters.

And she missed that St. Peter said Noah was one out of eight.

That's a bit how Father Fulcran Vigouroux reasoned from St. Augustine allowing one deflection from literal six days (reduced to one moment) to the opposite one (expanded to ages of thousands or millions of years) also being licit, while missing Mark 10:6. Not howlers in overall theology, but bloopers in extension of their Bible knowledge. (Theirs, not St. Augustine's).

The part about hundreds being necessary to cater to the animals ignores the use of waves and the rolling period of the Ark being fairly long. The inside of the Ark was more high-tech than the farms that she had known, before lying on a bed, speaking to her family, priests and Brentano.

As we are on Ron Conte or Ronald L. Conte Jr., he stated the dimensions of the Ark were as symbolical as the ages of pre-Abraham patriarchs:

In the Old Testament, numbers are often used in a figurative, not a literal manner. The ages of the Biblical persons prior to Abraham are figurative. The seven days of Creation are also figurative. So when the Bible gives the size of the Ark, the numbers are not literal.

As I have argued, there is no available figurative meaning of the ages of the patriarchs. Their names, yes, but not their ages.°°°

Fifth attack:

Noah simply would have taken pairs of such animals as he and his family would need for food and sacrifice, and to kick-start his new life on terra firma, until conditions began to revert back to normal.

The animals depicted at the Göbekli Tepe ‘menagerie’, close to where Noah’s Ark actually landed at Karaca Dag:

Noah’s Ark Mountain
(4) Noah's Ark Mountain | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu

might be a clue to the sort of animals that were to be found on board the Ark.

Sigh ... no, Göbekli Tepe may be near enough to the landing place or further off, but it is at a North limit of a plain that can be found between (post-Flood! modern!) Euphrates and Tigris, so in the land of Shinar. The skulls that have been perforated and the nearby evidence of corpses without heads exposed to vultures (with a probable parallel on the pillar shown, "birdman" being man without head and vulture sitting on the back or shoulders, before feasting), Göbekli Tepe definitely has more to do with Nimrod than with Noah.

I've said so over here:

Creation vs. Evolution: Göbekli Tepe was not Pre-Flood
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2024/07/gobekli-tepe-was-not-pre-flood.html

Sixth attack:

Not the last in order of his paper, but the one I saved for last. Once again highly reminiscent of my part time background among Lutherans who weren't sharing YEC with me.

Surely Creation Science, teaching a belief in God the Creator of all things, and vehemently defending the inerrancy of the Sacred Scriptures, ought to be warmly welcomed by the Church as an invaluable ally.

On the other hand, the God-fearing are not always right in their estimations, no matter how sincere, and they may need to be corrected.

Consider Our Lord’s constant corrections of good people along the lines of:

‘You have heard it said … but I tell you’
(e. g. Matthew 5:21-22).

In fact, the best go to for that formula is the Sermon on the Mount. And it is not a correction of how the law was understood, it's a new completion of it. Our Lord had authority to add to the law, which He had Himself given to Moses.

No one alive on earth today, probably not even if Henoch and Elijah were already returned~, has such authority, not even the Pope. If YEC was always understood by the Church to be the correct interpretation, it is. If Global Flood was always understood by the Church to be the correct interpretation, it is.

However, the link to half and half liberal Lutheranism, as I mentioned, is the idea that Jesus was more than once complaining about misunderstandings. Hence, the Church could have misunderstood sth for millennia (like, for instance, the reason why Jesus chose only men among the 12, and according to tradition, among the 72 as well).

The idea that we can correct the constant understanding of the Church is a trap for heterodoxy or sometimes even heresy.

Seventh attack:

Catholics (those tending to be of the conservative variety) who have followed Creationism over the years would be well aware that mainstream Catholic scholars have shown virtually no interest whatsoever in its teachings, and that official Catholic documents never seem to support Creation Science.

Myself, Hugh Owen, Robert Sungenis, and the past before 100 years ago, obviously excepted.

Prior to Lyell, all Catholic commentators were YEC with Global Flood. Between 1830 and 1900 authors wrote on three distinct solutions. Literal six days literally just after God created, also known as YEC. Gap Theory. Day Age theory. The medical doctor and friend of St. Clement Maria Hofbauer was no more fringe than Cardinal Wiseman or Father Vigouroux. In 1920, a fourth idea was proposed, what Protestants call "Framework theory", and it came from Paris of all places (not too many km from where I am now). It came to gain popularity, but certainly no exclusivity or near-exclusivity prior to CCC. I am glad Jimmy Akin considers someone in communion with "Pope Francis" has a right to chose whichever option, but here in Paris, this seems to not be the case, the traditional option or simply tradition, being excluded. Or at least it seems I am treated as having no right to express it.

A not so well thought through present, relying heavily on what was Lutheran and probably Anglican mainstream in more modernist Europe 40 years ago, simply does not trump Tradition.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Transfiguration
First Vespers
6 (5) Aug. 2024

In monte Thabor Transfiguratio Domini nostri Jesu Christi.

* St. Thomas held angels moved celestial bodies, Sun, Moon, Planets (Earth not being such a thing!), Potentially even Fix Stars.
** Sungenis also holds to Geocentrism, but so far I have not seen him defend angelic movers, and c. a decade or half decade ago, he considered me wrong for defending them.
*** Four corners (Apocalypse 7:1) are by the way four land's ends. Probably, starting at the Arctic Sea and going clockwise, 1) Kamtchatka, 2) Singapore / Sydney / Hobart, 3) Cape Horn, 4) Alaska.
° The locally favoured pronunciation of her place of origin, also origin of "surname" is Emmerick, it's near Munster.
°° I recalled wrongly. Here is the quote:

Quare vero primus coeperit dominari ostendit, agens de quodam filio Noe, de quo non egit Moyses, sic dicens: Centesimo anno tertiae chiliadis natus est Noe filius in similitudinem ejus, et dixit eum Jonithum . Trecentesimo anno dedit Noe donationes filio suo Jonitho, et dimisit eum in terram Ethan, et intravit eam Jonithus usque ad mare orientis, quod dicitur Elioschora, id est solis regio, hic accepit a Domino donum sapientiae, et invenit astronomiam.

°°° Here is the saga of my wild goose chase to refute myself and actually find a numeric symbolism:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Ussher III · Φιλολoγικά / Philologica: Numeric Symbolism in Genesis 5 Patriarchs? · HGL'S F.B. WRITINGS: Number Symbolism in Genesis 5? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Ages or Names Symbolic?

One cannot affirm of any part of the Bible "this is symbolic" unless one says what it symbolises. Or could in principle say it.

~ See Apocalypse 11.